Month seven

Keepsakes for baby

There are many ways to make sure you treasure something special for your baby, writes Margot Bertelsmann. These are some of our readers’ favourites YOU ONLY HAVE one chance to save a lock of your baby’s hair from her first-ever haircut, or the tiniest babygro you soon won’t be able to believe he ever fitted into. Plan ahead! Very soon, you’ll be so busy and overwhelmed you might forget to set aside one or two sentimental bits ‘n bobs to ooh and aah over, and humiliate your grown-up teenager with at his 18th birthday party. Here are some great ideas from parents who’ve been there.

LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD

Some people keep the front page of a newspaper from the day of their baby’s birth. How old school? But consider that it’s unlikely there will even be newspapers when your baby grows up, so it’s maybe not such a quaint idea after all. A “time capsule” of the events, fashions, technology and history of the day your child was born is a special way of memorialising the other very important event of that time: their birth. ● “We kept a teen magazine for our boys, so they can see whether their problems in puberty have changed at all (unlikely). – Urs

● “I keep journals for both my sons with photos, cards, scraps of wrapping paper and ribbons from gifts, and memorabilia like tickets to a special event. I did it to build a strong narrative for them. I have also kept some of their baby clothes, which I want to use as material to make a quilt for each of them.” – Samantha

● “I have the plastic wrist tags from the hospital on the day they were born.” – Stacey

ON MY BODY

Some parents want to remember their child’s birth on their own body. A tattoo of your child’s name or birthdate is a common way to be reminded of the most important little person in your life permanently. ● “When my now ex-wife fell pregnant with my now-19-year-old son I bought myself a cheap brass bracelet as a reminder of how happy I was. I was in a deep dark place at the time and he was a life saver. I’ve never taken it off and to this day it serves the purpose I bought it for.” – Quentin

YOU NEVER HAVE TO STOP COLLECTING REAL-LIFE KEEPSAKES AS YOUR CHILD GROWS

● “I keep all letters my daughter writes to me, my responses & those she received from her peers. I record her dancing, singing and speeches too. I also have a journal where I jot down her milestones, from the 3D scans when I was still carrying her in my belly, to her footprint of her first day on earth. I write my moments of pride in the journal too, and love letters she hasn’t seen yet.” – Selebano

THE VIRTUAL WORLD

Our memories are increasingly curated online. There are loads of ways you can make sure your little ones will get to see their baby pics even if the smartphone you had when they were a baby has long since been retired. Project Life is an excellent online/real world crossover scrapbooking app. Google “apps for children’s artwork” for ways to keep your kids’ art from taking over your fridge. Major social media sites also offer ways to keep content for children – check out Facebook’s “scrapbook” feature, for example, which allows you to tag photos of them before they even have their own accounts. ● “We created email addresses for our girls and will hand them over when they turn 16. In the meantime we mail photos, messages, achievements and anything else to those addresses.” – Anthony This mom offers a funny-but-true reminder of our tendencies to keep more for our firstborns, and run out of steam with later children: ● “I have a book I wrote in when pregnant with my first. It is written to her, all about choosing her name, memories of her first kick, places she ‘travelled’, music I played her. It ends when I was induced but now she writes in it. Rysz, being number two, got nothing.” - Luique

BITS N BOBS… OF BABY

Mom Meea says she saved first blankets, jerseys, bears and “the cap that was placed on my third baby’s head right after he was born”, but that she hadn’t saved hair or teeth “or other actual bits of baby”. That made us snortlaugh – but it appears to be a powerfully sentimental keepsake choice. Read on... ● “I know a woman who kept her first child’s nail clippings along with the usual – first tooth lost, locket of first hair.” – Lorraine

● “I have the pee-on-the-stick tests for all three my children. The catch is I forgot to write the names/dates on them, so they are really just three sticks with positive pregnancy lines covered in my urine. I will of course one day write their names on randomly and just go,’Yep, that’s your stick’.” – Celeste

● “I’ve heard of someone who had their children’s umbilical stumps cast in silver and put on charm bracelets which they gave to them when they were older.” – Kim

● “I currently have two baby teeth in the change holder of my wallet.” – Briony

● “This was me until I had to get a new wallet.” – Rikky

A NEW LIFE

A new life is often celebrated by planting a new life. You could plant a tree for your newborn and marvel at how both of them grow over the years. In some cultures, the placenta – the organ your body made from scratch to feed your foetus, and expelled from your body after birth – is kept and planted, or even eaten: ● “I planted my placenta in a pot with a lemon tree. This year is the first year it’s bearing fruit (he just turned six). Nobody wants G&Ts at my house this year!” – Elizabeth YP